Wow..it has been a really long time since I blogged!
A lot has hap­pened that I will get to, hope­fully, soon. In the meantime…a note.….
Tomor­row my step son is deployed to Afghanistan. He has a few months state­side and then he goes over­seas. We will not see him for a year or more. I try to imag­ine what it must be like to pre­pare for this moment, and my stom­ach gets upset, and I am on the verge of tears, and I am scared. And that is just me get­ting to stay state­side. How do you pos­si­bly pre­pare? I pray they have, and will be trained for every­thing imag­in­able and know the rest is out of their hands. Hope­fully he goes leav­ing every­thing here taken care of so he has no con­cerns but to con­cen­trate on him­self, and his job, and to get home safely.
How very brave they are!! They joined the mil­i­tary know­ing just such a moment could hap­pen and now they go. Putting on a brave face for all the world to see when inside they must be scared silly.
I am sad because I know he will come back changed. Hope­fully for the bet­ter, but def­i­nitely changed. How can you not? He will face things, and see things, we will never in our life time see, because peo­ple like him risk every­thing so we never have to.
I trust that our gov­ern­ment knows what they are doing. I trust that they are doing every­thing in their power to keep our men and women safe, because being over there, and fight­ing this war, is nec­es­sary. I trust that they know we are turn­ing over our great­est trea­sure into their keep­ing.
I know how I am feel­ing. Can­not begin to imag­ine how his dad and mom are feel­ing. Hear­ing news about Afghanistan will be filled with worry. A door­bell ring­ing will cause a heart to stop. Some­thing thou­sands of peo­ple face every day, even as I write this.
Sup­port our troops. Please. Even if you don’t believe in the war, or why we are there, sup­port them. Believe in them and what they know they have to do. Because to be over there, putting their lives on the line every minute and every day, can­not be in vain. Let me not hear one crit­i­cism of this war, or monies spent to pro­tect them, or doubt about why we are there, or should we be there, or what­ever you feel. Keep it to your­self. Let the Pres­i­dent and the gen­er­als, with their knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion, do their jobs so all of them can come home. Keep it to your­self or I might just turn around and give you a tongue lash­ing like you have never heard. Send some­one you love dearly to be in harms way every minute for the next year, and maybe you will under­stand.
I am so very proud of my step-son. He will be in my thoughts every minute of every day til he comes home. He is tak­ing the love of many, many peo­ple with him.
I won’t say good-bye. I will say “So long kiddo. See you in a year. Be safe. God-speed. Love you.” And with a throat so tight with tears I can­not breathe, watch him say good­bye to his mom and dad.

Please God…oh please…keep him safe.

This was taken from USA Weekend.….

Syn­chro­nous fire­flies, Tennessee.

A nat­ural spec­ta­cle unlike any other in the West­ern Hemi­sphere takes place every June in a Great Smoky Moun­tains meadow, where throngs of fire­flies gather for two to three weeks of breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful syn­chro­nized mat­ing dis­plays. The show begins ever night between 9 and 10, when dozens, then hun­dreds, then thou­sands of the light­ning bugs begin flash­ing almost at the same time. The insects flash together for two to four sec­onds, fol­lowed by 10 to 12 sec­ond pauses. Because adult fire­flies live for only three weeks, these bril­lant light shows are the only way males and females can find each other in the dark­ness. The meadow is about six miles south­west of Gatlin­burg, Tenn. The National Park Ser­vice runs buses to the site from the Sug­ar­lands vis­i­tor cen­ter..  www.nps.gov/grsm

Wow. Peo­ple need to see what beau­ti­ful things our coun­try has to offer. This is SO going on my lists of “where I want to go for vacation.”.

Well.  Thought would be back on here long before this. Appar­ently, at times, things need to moved from one site to another, this blog post being one. My son, the com­puter genius who does all this stuff, was VERY busy and, although I can hardly believe it, my blog was low, low, low on his list of things to get done.  Hrmph. But with­out too much harass­ing on my part, we are back, and once again I can grace the world with my words of wisdom.

Hello?

You out there?

Hope so!!

Test­ing this and if we are up and run­ning I will be back later today or tomorrow!!

Missed talk­ing to you all!

I have a CD in my car that I love. It has become the sound­track of my life.
Quite some  time ago I was telling my old­est daugh­ter that when­ever these songs play, my mind instantly goes to my life, replay­ing scenes from my child­hood, Christmas’s, school, friends, grow­ing up…
The songs are instru­men­tals, the images come with­out bid­ding. I usu­ally turn it up and just let the visu­als flow thru my head, tak­ing the good with the bad, feel­ing the sad and the happy.
When I was telling my daugh­ter this, she told me every­one has a sound­track for their life. That felt so right, and it was so nice to put words to what was hap­pen­ing.
I real­ized the other day while lis­ten­ing, that when I die, I will really miss my fam­ily. I know they say that in heaven, or wher­ever it is our souls go, that we are bliss­fully happy. I hope that is true. I’ll still miss them.
This sounds a bit sad and melan­choly but it’s really not. I intend to just add to the sound­track of my life each and every day for as many days as I am given. Watch­ing myself grow, then my kids, and now my grand kids, adding peo­ple, then los­ing peo­ple, lis­ten­ing  as the music flows thru my heart and head is more happy then sad.
The sound­track of my life makes me appre­ci­ate and love all that is around me even more. It is a good thing.
I hope you have a sound­track for your life. Open your heart to not only hear it but to see it. It is a won­drous gift.

Sev­eral weeks ago I sent an email to all my kids and their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers ask­ing for their input on what color to paint my stairs. The house is very old, the stairs very nar­row, and although hav­ing them stripped and stained was an option, I was pretty sure I was going to paint them, as they sep­a­rate two wood floors of dif­fer­ent styles. I was very seri­ous in my ques­tion. The kids, how­ever, maybe not so.

After 14 emails back and forth I put together all THEIR sug­ges­tions and this is what my stair­case will look like if I incor­po­rate all their “ideas”.

“Funny…very funny.… Okay…it will be stairs painted to look like stairs on the tread with a pas­ture scene on the riser that makes you want to go out and graze, with a fire­mans pole in the mid­dle that, if you pull one way it turns into a luge but if you turn the other way, a moun­tain goat comes out from the ramp car­ry­ing a bloody arm and car­ries you down­stairs fart­ing all the way…are you happy now????”

How can you not love such a help­ful family????

Now, just try­ing to fig­ure out where to start.

I think that every­one who is spout­ing the words “social­ized med­i­cine” needs to get it right. Social­ized med­i­cine is when the gov­ern­ment has com­plete con­trol over every aspect of your health care. They employee the doc­tors,  run the hos­pi­tals etc.  With the new health care reform plan you still get to pick your doc­tors, pick your hos­pi­tals (unless the health insur­ance you have tells you oth­er­wise) and you get to pick your own insur­ance. All pri­vate, hence not social­ized.  Got that?

Sec­ondly. When social secu­rity and medicare and med­ic­aid were first sug­gested, fought over, and then hard won, it was the same debate. And I would, today, bet my last dol­lar that if you are read­ing this, your par­ents are prepar­ing to receive one of the above, if they have not already, and many are darn scared that they may go away all together. All per­fect exam­ples that a sys­tem needed to change, needed to exist and, despite all the dooms­day­ers, exist to this day. Fraught with all sorts of prob­lems that need fix­ing I might add, but there nonethe­less. And I know my hus­band and I watch with con­cern as social secu­rity starts to wane as we did, and do, look to that to help sup­port us when we quit work­ing so you younger peo­ple can take your right­ful place.

Our health care reform was in des­per­ate need of change. Our insur­ance pol­icy for us went from $79 a month to $218 a month just recently. And although it is being held up by our state gov­ern­ment to make sure there are no fraud­u­lent prac­tices going on, it will pass. With the new reform bill we may be able to cross state lines and find an insur­ance that cov­ers our needs and is more afford­able. We can­not do that now. The gov­ern­ment is step­ping in to take con­trol of the finan­cial end of the this mess. You and I can’t do it, and the insur­ance com­pa­nies sure aren’t going to unless law dic­tates changes. Who is left? Yes, the per­son most respon­si­ble for tak­ing care of the Amer­i­can people.

I have not read the bill. I am let­ting those who know do that. Am I pay­ing atten­tion? Absolutely. Will there be some things I don’t like? Absolutely. Do I think we need a nec­es­sary kick in the butt to get every­one talk­ing and finally doing some­thing about out of con­trol health care costs? Absolutely. Do I trust my Pres­i­dent to do his absolute best for me and my fam­ily? Absolutely.  Go reread the debate when social secu­rity and medicare were first pro­posed.  And don’t be sur­prised by your sense of deja vu.

If you your­self have read the bill in its entirety and under­stand it, then by all means soap box on. If you haven’t and are only going by what you hear on biased news sta­tions, radios or read in the paper, then I respect­fully ask you to inform your­self before telling me we are liv­ing in a “social­ist” gov­ern­ment. And when  your kids or your grand kids get insur­ance despite the fact they were born with some dis­ease,  or your uncle with can­cer gets treat­ment because they can no longer pun­ish him for get­ting a dis­ease com­pletely out of his con­trol? Or, God for­bid, you your­self need to change jobs because your com­pany down­sides and you can get insur­ance no mat­ter where you go now when before health care reform you couldn’t? Will you  be call­ing your Pres­i­dent and mak­ing as much noise as your are now? I hope so. I really do.

I hope I am not the only per­son who, lately, writes every­thing in text mode. Notes to myself or hus­band, blogs, face­book, basi­cally any­thing that I need to write. Funny thing is, even though I cringe when I reread stuff that can’t be changed and real­ize my mis­take, I also real­ize that most peo­ple read­ing it will get it, espe­cially if they text. And although I am not as good at abbre­vi­at­ing as my kids are, or as  some mes­sages I see on TV when they show some­ones text, I am slowly learn­ing.
Maybe you have seen the email that went around quite some time ago where they left out most of the vow­els and peo­ple could basi­cally still read the mes­sage. It was a study done on what peo­ple actu­ally see when they read and appar­ently we don’t see every let­ter. That’s how I feel when I text. Just putting an “e” in text is dri­ving me batty right now. I was think­ing this morn­ing that text writ­ing might be the next wave of the future. Books can be shorter and use fewer pages because the words will be shorter. Kinder­gart­ners will look at the writ­ten word as it cur­rently is and be so baf­fled teach­ers will need to start teach­ing “The Text Method” of writ­ing, at which point they will com­pletely get that dg also means dog. Do I want that to hap­pen? Absolutely, one hun­dred per­cent NO!! Will it hap­pen? With­out a doubt. Our lan­guage writ­ten out is beau­ti­ful. I hope we never, ever lose it.
For myself, I intend to work harder when writ­ing any­thing but a text, to remem­ber that. I hope you do too.
HAGD!!

I really don’t know if houses in town need sump pumps. Here on the farm we do. It is basi­cally an open well inside our home where water that col­lects around the out­side walls of the house can drain thus keep­ing water from com­ing thru your walls and the foun­da­tion col­laps­ing. When it reaches a cer­tain level set by your float, it emp­ties. Our pipe runs under our porch and drains unto our dri­ve­way. Sump pumps are a life saver.

This year our sump pump has started work­ing really early. So early that night before last, when we heard it kick in, there was a mad scram­ble to get out­doors and move the 2 foot snow drift still in the way of the open­ing. Some sci­ence geek will prob­a­bly tell me that the water would just seep into the snow and our mad dash was not needed. Maybe. I was more wor­ried the end of the hose was frozen and the water would run back down the hose, into the well and the sump pump would run con­tin­u­ously try­ing to get the water out. Then the sump pump motor would burn up and, hav­ing had that hap­pen before where we lit­er­ally stayed up all night haul­ing bucket after bucket of water out to keep our base­ment dry until our elec­tri­cian arrived with a new pump, I am not about to let that happen.

I did hear a year or so ago, that it is impor­tant to have a bat­tery oper­ated  hook up on your sump pump so that in the event of a major rain storm, when all the elec­tric­ity goes out and your sump well starts to fill, that it can still empty. I was amazed some­one had come up with that and quickly real­ized that it made more sense then sliced bread and that it was a must have. No, I don’t have one if that is what you are won­der­ing. Just one of those things that as the world dried up over the sum­mer, I quickly forgot.

Not today!! With snow every­where still to melt and rain/snowstorm loom­ing on the hori­zon for this week­end, not to men­tion tor­nado sea­son right around the cor­ner, it’s best I get on it. Some things are really worth buying.

I love my sump pump.

Mud, fog, snow, slop, mud, drifts, pud­dles, fog, mud, stand­ing water, snow, mud.…

This is what the kids have to look for­ward to when they visit this week­end. I have extra laun­dry deter­gent on hand. Since they are com­ing regard­less of the con­di­tions, can I take this as proof pos­i­tive they are com­ing to see US and not just the farm? I’m kid­ding. I know they are com­ing just to see us and the farm is an extra perk.

I think.

Did I men­tion mud?

Here is my life the last few days.…

The National Weather Ser­vice
Des Moines, IA
6:31 pm CST, Tue., Mar. 9, 2010

… DENSE FOG ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CST TONIGHT…

A DENSE FOG ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CST TONIGHT.

* SHORT TERM TRENDS… CONDITIONS ARE BEGINNING TO IMPROVE IN FAR SOUTHERN IOWA SOUTH OF HIGHWAY HIGHWAY 34. AREAS OF FOG WILL PERSIST THERE… BUT VISIBILITIES SHOULD RISE UP TO A MILE OR TWO. FURTHER NORTH… LITTLE CHANGE IN CONDITIONS IS ANTICIPATED THROUGH THE EVENING HOURS WITH CONTINUED WIDESPREAD DENSE FOG. VISIBILITIES OF A QUARTER MILE OR LESS WILL BE COMMON… AND EVEN DOWN TO A FEW HUNDRED FEET IN SOME LOCATIONS.

* IMPACTS… THE WIDESPREAD NATURE OF THE DENSE FOG AND EXTREMELY LOW VISIBILITIES WILL PRODUCE VERY HAZARDOUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS THROUGH THE EVENING. VISIBILITIES MAY BE NEAR ZERO AT TIMES… WHICH IS QUITE UNCOMMON FOR THIS TIME OF DAY. SEVERAL ACCIDENTS DUE TO FOG HAVE ALREADY BEEN REPORTED.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…

A DENSE FOG ADVISORY MEANS VISIBILITIES WILL FREQUENTLY BE REDUCED TO LESS THAN ONE QUARTER MILE. IF DRIVING ALLOW FOR EXTRA TRAVEL TIME. SLOW DOWN… USE YOUR HEADLIGHTS… AND LEAVE PLENTY OF DISTANCE AHEAD OF YOU.

&&

SIGH.…